Ep 22 - 15 Minutes With Your Team to Keep Your Head Above Water

Power Up Your Team Podcast

Don’t we all wish we had more time? But all we have are 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

Welcome to episode 22 of Power Up Your team podcast. The show notes can be found online at PowerUpYourTeam.com/22. Today, I will discuss a great routine to bond with your team and proactively ensure everyone is positioned to work successfully.

As business owner or CEO you want to be sure your team is working effectively and work is flowing seamlessly so your customers are serviced well. Sometimes you find yourself hesitant to delegate important matters. It’s not that you don’t trust the individuals on your team but you question your team’s ability to collaborate well so everyone can do their part.

Especially in times when not everyone sits in one office because people are working remotely it is more difficult to determine if people may have questions or are lacking information or material to do their work.

There may have been instances, where you find out after the fact that issues popped up and work hasn’t gotten done. As result, you are rather doing a lot of the heavy lifting yourself so you don’t have to extensively review your team’s work or clean up a mess.

So here is a simple way to keep your fingers on the pulse. Spend 15-minutes with you team either daily, bi-weekly or weekly depending on the flow of work.

And let me explain what I mean by flow of work:

In a call center, where people review call metrics daily, it makes sense to spend 15 minutes each morning to ensure everyone is positioned for success.

In an accounting department, where people work to deliver a monthly book close, weekly 15-minute meetings may be enough to ensure everything is on track.

A weekly cadence might also work well for a sales organization to align everyone around prospecting and customer touch points for the upcoming week.

These 15-minute morning meetings are called “huddles” in the lean/six sigma operating environment and are also known as “stand-up meetings” in Information Technology department. Stand-up because the meeting is so short that it’s not worth finding a conference room and sit down.

You also may know huddle activity from sports. At a football game you see the players gathering in a close circle aligning on their strategy for the next offensive play.

And that’s precisely what these 15-minute meeting are doing for your business. The key question to address:

Is everyone positioned to win? Do all team members have what they need to be successful in their job on that day or during that week?

You as leader have a facilitative role. That means you ensure everyone attending the huddle has a chance to speak up and ask questions while you are listening to ensure that your team has a plan to execute.

This short touch point with your team has a grounding function. It sends a signal that everyone is responsible to generate collective success. Therefore, it is a team building event as much as it is reassurance for you that work will get done and every team member has clarity on what they need to contribute.

“We are in it to win it!” Whatever winning means in your business, you want to be sure you team starts off the day or week with a collective positive can-do attitude.

During the huddle, you need to ensure that team members surface any problems that get in the way of success. And then your job is to motivate and support them in their problem-solving efforts. Remember, a huddle is not a pity party where they give you a list of things to fix.

There are two things to keep in mind as you are designing your 15-minute routines.

Find out more at www.powerupyourteam.com/22